Plussed-out

The sparkles were lonely. Cloro had assumed light never needed company, but the sparkles had been hanging in the dark for a very long time, waiting to be noticed. Once visitors started noticing them, they decided they wanted a room of their own.

They built it above the water — or above only in the sense that everything inside feels a little lighter. They call it Plussed-out. The walls are orange. The ceiling is yellow. The floor is the quiet ticking sound sparkles make when they think nobody is listening.

Pip counts the sparkles every hour and writes the number on a small slate. Tally keeps losing the slate. Between them the census is almost always wrong by the same amount, which the sparkles find flattering.

Cloro visits sometimes, easy to spot as the only dark shape in a room made of light, one arm always raised — the same arm that touched the first plus. The sparkles like this. It reminds them of when they were young and there was only one of them, being touched carefully by a small dark thing.